MOVIES
MOVIES - 1
“Finally, brothers, whatever things are true, whatever things are of serious concern, whatever things are righteous, whatever things are chaste, whatever things are lovable, whatever things are well spoken of, whatever things are virtuous, whatever things are praiseworthy, continue considering these things.” – Apostle Paul – Phil. 4:8 – The BIBLE
Motion pictures take us places we have never been, in the company of people we do not know, and transfer us to realms of experience we can only imagine. – Gary Pulliam
Even when hope and science fail us, art survives. – Janet Maslin (Critic)
Drama is the study of someone who loses his life, and then gets it back again. – Steven Spielberg
Attempt the impossible to improve your work. – Bette Davis
Films can only be made by by-passing the will of those who appear in them, using not what they do, but what they are. – Robert Bresson (French director)
You can speak well if you can deliver the message of your heart. – John Ford
The secret of humor is surprise. – Aristotle
I’ve been on a calendar but I’ve never been on time. – Marilyn Monroe
A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something. – Frank Capra (Director)
When Ginger Rogers danced with Astaire, it was the only time in the movies when you looked at the man, not the woman. – Gene Kelly
His job is to preside over accidents. – Orson Welles (on directing)
There is no thief like a bad movie – Sam Ewing (Baseball)
You know, when I first went into the movies Lionel Barrymore played my grandfather. Later he played my father and finally he played my husband. If he had lived I’m sure I would have played his mother. That’s the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older. – Lillian Gish
Everyone told me to pass on SPEED because it was a bus movie. – Sandra Bullock
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. – Warren Buffett.
Talent is the gift plus the passion—a desire to succeed so intense that no force on earth can stop it. – Neil Simon (Playwriter, screenwriter)
The only time a woman succeeds in changing a man, is when he is a baby. – Natalie Wood
Drama is life with all the dull parts cut out. – Alfred Hitchcock
MOVIES - 2
Movies both reflect and create social conditions, but their special charm is to offer a world where people consume without the tedium of labor. Characters float in a world where the bill never comes due…and we wonder why we’re a debtor nation? – Molly Haskell – CONSUMING DESIRES
In movies we escape into the experience of setting free our IMAGINATION! – Gary Pulliam
Stardom isn’t a profession—it’s an accident. – Lauren Bacall
“We artists love praise, but we love truth even better.” – Robert Shaw (Henry VIII) to Paul Schofield (Sir Thomas Moore) in A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
A good director doesn’t get in the way of a script. That’s all a good director does. – William Goldman (Screenwriter)
Always be the first rate version of yourself, instead of the second-rate version of somebody else. – Judy Garland
Fear, not money, drives this industry. There is too much failure. 85% of all movies do not recoup their production costs. – Karl Iglesia (Film historian)
A film is – or should be – more like music than fiction. It should be a progression of mood and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, and all that comes later. – Stanley Kubrick (Director)
Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism. – Bette Davis
Hollywood is where if you don’t have happiness, you send out for it. – Rex Reed (Film critic)
Even if one is not religious, even if one disagrees with how faith is portrayed on film nowadays, it has always been stitched into the culture of American life. To ignore it or misrepresent it is dishonest. – Gary Pulliam
Music expresses that which cannot be said and of which it is impossible to be silent. – Victor Hugo
Every great work of art has two faces—one in its own time and one in the future, toward eternity. – Daniel Barenboim (Pianist / conductor) – PARALLELS & PARADOXES : EXPLANATIONS OF MUSIC IN SOCIETY
I am a mushroom—on which the dew of heaven drops now and then. – John Ford
When you’re a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you get older, it’s a straight part. – Laurence Olivier (British actor)
A director’s job is to make actors comfortable enough to perform to their best abilities. – Clint Eastwood
MOVIES - 3
Film as art and as a medium of communication has made extraordinary advancement in understanding the cultures in the world community. Entertainment in all its forms is now a global business phenomenon. There is a ubiquitous explosion of film production, not just in so-called free or civilized nations, but even in third-world or oppressive governments. – Gary Pulliam
Imagination is the highest kite one can fly. – Lauren Bacall
She just plain wore out. – Ray Bolger (on the death of Judy Garland)
It’ll be the Internet and piracy that will kill film. There’s a philosophy that the Internet should be free, but the reality is that piracy will destroy the film industry and film as an art form because it’s so expensive to make a movie. Maybe you’ll have funky little independent movies, and it’ll go back and then start up again some other way. – Helen Mirren (British actress)
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but to their inward significance. – Aristotle
“It’s a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done. It’s a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” – Ronald Coleman as Charles Darney facing execution by guillotine at the conclusion of A TALE OF TWO CITIES – Charles Dickens (British author)
Hollywood is a sewer—with service from the Ritz-Carlton. – Wilson Mizner (American playwriter)
Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you $50,000 for a kiss and 50 cents for your soul. – Marilyn Monroe
There is a disagreement between the way things are and the way I think things should be. – Francis Ford Coppola (American director)
There’s great respect for the dead in Hollywood, but none for the living. – Errol Flynn (American actor)
You really like me! – Sally Field (on winning her second Oscar)
The function of art is to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and as if by magic, and we see new meaning in it. – Anais Nin (French-born American writer)
The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn’t – Joseph L. Mankiewicz (American director)
Behind every successful man there is an astonished woman. – Frank Capra
Orson Welles is at heart a magician whose particular talent lies not so much in his creative imagination—which is considerable—but in his proven ability to stretch the familiar elements of theatrical effect far beyond the normal point of tension. – John Houseman (Actor / teacher)
MOVIES - 4
Years ago, a witness in the Manson trial, being questioned about his part in trying to get the Manson gang an audition for records or films, recalled, “I remember the sky and the sun and the girls and the motorcycles and the hills and the music and guitars and I thought what a wonderful scene it would make for a movie.” People such as he ARE making films now, and now more than ever the filmgoer’s watchword must be, “Let the buyer beware!”– Edwin Howard (respected former movie critic) – MEMPHIS PRESS-SCIMITAR – 1970
Pictures are the only business where you can sit out front and applaud yourself. – Will Rogers (American actor / humorist)
Acting is the greatest answer to my loneliness that I have found. – Claire Danes - (American actress)
We may be angered, antagonized, saddened, manipulated, even jolted with side-splitting laughter, and in many of these cases, tears may flow. Or in other cases we may be stunned, overwhelmed, filled with admiration, or even indignation. Films, perhaps more than any other art form, reach beyond and transcend cultural boundaries. – Gary Pulliam
Hollywood is a place where they shoot too many pictures and not enough actors. – Walter Winchell - (Columnist)
Everything I learned I learned from the movies. – Audrey Hepburn
Making a film is a cross between a circus, a military campaign, a nightmare and an orgy. – Norman Mailer (American writer)
I don’t make pictures just to make money. I make money to make more pictures. – Walt Disney
Making movies is an apprenticeship for life. – Robert Watts
Cinema can fill in the empty spaces in your life and your loneliness. – Pedro Almodovar (Spanish director)
All of my life I have had a chance of hate and love. I chose love and I am here. – A. R. Rahman, accepting his Academy Award for the music of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE)
The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder. – Alfred Hitchcock
You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the naval of a fruitfly, and still have enough room for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart. – Fred Allen (American comic)
“My mama always said, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get.” – Tom Hanks as FORREST GUMP – Phil Roth (Screenplay)
Failure has a thousand explanations. Success doesn’t need one. – Alec Guiness (British actor)
Didn’t you see those big ears when you talked to him, and those big feet and hands, not to mention that ugly face of his? – Jack Warner grieving over actor Clark Gable’s screen test.
MOVIES - 5
‘They’ told us that, if we’d relax, take our clothes off, and not get all uptight about it, that there would be no more sex crimes. So we let it all hang out—and the incidence of rape increased 10% in one year. – Paul Harvey (American newsman)
The possession of knowledge does not kill the since of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery. – Anais Nin
I made some mistakes in drama. I thought the drama was when the actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries! – Frank Capra
“A boy’s best friend is his mother.” – Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates) to Janet Leigh (Marion Crane) – PSYCHO – Robert Bloch (Screenplay)
How times have changed! A few generations ago songs and movies were about love and romance. Now it’s about sex and violence. And we wonder why many modern relationships suffer? – Gary Pulliam
Real love stories never have endings. – Richard Bach (American writer)
Over the years all these vampire movies have come out, and nobody looks like a vampire anymore. – Johnny Depp
There are millions and millions of people out there who cringe at the onslaught of profanity in movies. Many seldom see films for that very reason. – Cecil Johnson, columnist – FORT WORTH STAR TELEGRAM – “Words Other than (Bleep.”
If my films make one person miserable, I’ll feel I’ve done my job. – Woody Allen
If a boy and girl walk into the sunset in the last scene, it adds 10 million dollars to the box office. – George Lucas
The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? – Bette Davis
Always make the audience suffer as much as possible. – Alfred Hitchcock
Nobody in television makes as much money as Robert Redford, who likes to make movies for several million dollars only on the condition that they contain some social message. I cannot take very seriously a social message delivered by an actor who makes 9 million dollars to deliver it, and who charge you five dollars to see it. – David Brinkley (American news columnist)
Dumbo…makes me cry. Every single time, in the exact same spot. I just have special affection for Dumbo. – Leonard Maltin (Film critic)
Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy is in longshot. – Charlie Chaplin
Art is something to be proud of. Art is no compromise. – Christian Bale
MOVIES - 6
In the arts the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising. – Pauline Kael (Film critic)
People who use profanity as a club to bash others are imprisoned by the limitations of their vocabulary. An angry person may have a reason to be enraged. His greatest problem, however, could be that he lacks the words to think and communicate clearly and effectively. One does not need to have a huge vocabulary to formulate and express ideas coherently, although it helps. One certainly needs more than obscene expressions for copulation and incest. – Cecil Johnson, columnist – FORT WORTH STAR TELEGRAM – “Words Other than (Bleep.”
Nothing is impossible. The word itself says: “I’m possible!” – Audrey Hepburn
The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them. – Alfred Hitchcock
I am not blown away by the in-your-face pyrotechnics of self-serving, egotistical directors. Nor am I over-impressed by the talent, techniques, special effects, graphic realism, or assaults on the senses. I am more captivated by content or substance, artistic imagery, lyrical beauty, meaningful relationships and enlightening characters—even new emotional experiences. Most people I know feel the same way. – Gary Pulliam
Old age is no place for sissies. – Bette Davis
Hollywood executives believe that money is both the be-all and end-all to the moviemaking process. – Leonard Maltin (Movie critic)
Acting is not about being someone different. It’s finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there. – Meryl Streep
Music stops you from thinking. – Peter Weir (Australian director)
A mistake in judgment isn’t fatal, but too much anxiety about judgment is. – Pauline Kael (Movie critic)
All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl. – Charlie Chaplin
The cinema, like the detective story, enables us to experience without danger in all the excitements, passions, and fantasies which have to be repressed in a humanistic age. – Carl Jung (Swiss psychiatrist / writer)
I arrived in Hollywood without having my nose fixed, my teeth capped, or my name changed. That is very gratifying to me. – Barbra Streisand
Every time I go to a movie, it’s magic, no matter what it’s about. – Steven Spielberg
As far as the filmmaking process is concerned, stars are essentially worthless – and absolutely essential. – William Goldman (Screenwriter)
I restore myself when I’m alone. – Marilyn Monroe
MOVIES - 7
My retirement is both voluntary and involuntary. One reason, and this is voluntary, is the impact of television. All old movies are turning up on TV, and frankly, making pictures doesn’t interest me anymore. Another reason is the film industry is in a declining state. – Randolf Scott (American actor)
Don’t follow trends—start trends. – Frank Capra
It’s easier to get an actor to be a cowboy than to get a cowboy to be an actor. – John Ford
The only reason I’m in Hollywood is I don’t have the moral courage to refuse the money. – Marlon Brando (American actor)
The making of a picture surely ought to be a fascinating adventure. It is not; it is an endless contention of tawdry egos, some of them powerful, almost all of them vociferous, and almost none of them capable of saying anything more creative than credit-stealing and self-promotion. – Raymond Chandler (American writer)
A day without laughter is a day wasted. – Charlie Chaplin
The giant gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy. – Meryl Streep
People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don’t have a middle or an end anymore. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning. – Steven Spielberg
Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him. – Marilyn Monroe
Story really matters! In any given year some of the best movie experiences come from true life, not the recycled fiction accounts of ambitious filmmakers. – Gary Pulliam
Sex is God’s joke on human beings. – Bette Davis
No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of our soul. A little twitch in our optic nerve, a shocked effect: twenty-four illuminated frames a second, darkness in between, the optic nerve incapable of detecting the darkness. – Ingmar Bergman (Danish director)
We create monsters and then we can’t control them. – Joel Coen (American director / screenwriter)
I think one of the main things that you have to think about when acting in the movies is try not to make the acting show. – James Stewart
Truth has given us an appetite for art. – Pauline Kael (Film critic)
The only thing an actor owes his public is not to bore them. – Marlon Brando
Strong women only marry weak men. – Bette Davis
MOVIES - 8
Three of the main functions of movies are ENTERTAINMENT, EXPERIENCE, and EDUCATION. Regardless of what we think, movies influence our world view, our opinions, our tastes, and arguably, our behavior and personality. – Gary Pulliam
In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write, but evidently can’t read. If they could read this stuff, they’d stop writing. – Will Rogers
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. – Billy Wilder (American director / writer)
A film is never really any good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. – Orson Welles
Acting is not an important job in the scheme of things. Plumbing is. – Spencer Tracy
I’ve worked with Bette Davis, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda. Here’s the thing they all had in common. They all, even in their 70’s, worked a little harder than everyone else. – Ron Howard (American director / actor)
Ten men waiting for me at the door? Send one of them home. I’m tired. – Mae West (American actress / writer)
Most R-rated films reduce their audience to peeping toms and voyeurs. – Gary Pulliam
John Candy knew he was going to die. He told me on his 40th birthday. He said, “Well, Maureen, I’m on borrowed time.” – Maureen O’Hara (American actress)
I’m first and foremost into the story, the characters. – David Lean (British director)
A good story is at its best when the line between truth and fiction remain ambiguous. – Leicester Hemingway (American writer)
I only sound intelligent when there’s a good script writer around. – Christian Bale
Dreaming about being an actress is more exciting than being one. – Marilyn Monroe
I didn’t want to be a dancer. I just did it to work my way through college. But I was always an athlete and gymnast, so it came naturally. – Gene Kelly
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself. – Charlie Chaplin
Television is what made IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE the classic that it is today. – Leonard Maltin (Movie Critic)
We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to. – Bette Davis
America once had the clarity of a pioneer ax. – Robert Osborne (Movie historian)
Great filmmaking does not necessarily result in great films! Many cinema masterpieces still leave us wanting, empty and dissatisfied, not worth a second viewing. – Gary Pulliam
MOVIES - 9
Movies transcend entertainment. They are also great education tools. It’s the collaboration of all types of artists, writers, directors, actors, film editors, photographers and camera operators, musicians, sound technicians, computer specialists, costume designers, architects, set decorators, construction workers, advertisers, stunt workers, even food providers. This diverse group takes us to places and times we’ve never been to or experienced before. Result—a dreadful product—or, in some rare cases—a masterpiece! – Gary Pulliam
Television is chewing-gum for the eye. – Frank Lloyd Wright
Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy gets the Catholic Church. Americas gets Hollywood. – Erica Jong (American novelist)
I’m very enthusiastic about the Academy Awards because if there were no Oscars, we wouldn’t have as many good movies as we do have. – Robert Osborne
Acting is like hearing something for the first time, and then saying something for the first time. – Vincent Minelli – (To his tearful little girl, Liza Minnelli, comforting her and tucking her in, the night after she lamented dropping the baby Jesus in her first-grade school play.)
They’ve smashed racism in the face, but they’re doing it while they make your laugh. – Gene Wilder ((speaking of the movie, BLAZING SADDLES)
Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director’s point of view. – Steven Spielberg
Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can. – Owen Meredith (Poet)
In the 40’s and 50’s movies were expected to last only three years or so. – Robert Osborn (Film historian)
A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability toarticulate human relationships. – Gore Vidal (American writer)
The moment a man starts to talk about technique, that’sproof that he’s fresh out of ideas. – Raymond Chandler
Massey won’t be satisfied until someone assassinates him.” – George S. Kaufman (Speaking about Raymond Massey’s obsession of continuing the character of Abe Lincoln.)
Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. It’s that part of the American brain lately vacated by God. – Erica Jong
Of all the jaw-dropping beautiful women who became genuine movie stars, none has had a longer film career (62 years) or has been in Technicolor more often (34 times) or has had a more veritable group of leading men (From John Wayne to John Candy), or has spent more time on a pirate ship than that magnificent red-head, Maureen O’Hara. – Robert Osborne
MOVIES - 10
